


Who am I

by Klayr_de_Gall



Series: Klayr fills some Prompts [3]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Billy is just done, Billy is stuck in the UpSide-Down, Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, being hopeless, mention of harringrove, trying not to die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:53:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22146727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Klayr_de_Gall/pseuds/Klayr_de_Gall
Summary: "That's my name..." Billy tells the darkness around himself. He is sitting in the furthest corner to the door, still numb and freezing under all the covers. He feels ill, knows that he lost a lot of weight, that he is pale like a ghost. The rusty screw that he uses to mark the wall looks sturdy in comparison to his shaking, boney finger.He sets the sharp end to the wood and begins to write his name, line by line by line, above all the days and weeks he counted, little parts of wood falling to the ground. Unnoticed tears falling to the ground.He will die here.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Series: Klayr fills some Prompts [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1585240
Comments: 21
Kudos: 118





	Who am I

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by a song prompt that [gideongrace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gideongrace/pseuds/gideongrace) send me on Tumblr!
> 
> ["Who am I - London Grammar"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvbl66d-PXk)
> 
> It's probably not what you expected, but I hope you like it anyway. When I listened to the song with my eyes closed, I could picture all of this so vividly that I had to write it!
> 
>  **Warning:**  
>  \- Description of gore  
> \- Monsterfighting  
> \- Mention of death
> 
> The Story is unbetaed. I did my best, but I'm no native speaker, so, sorry for any mistakes.

Billy.

Billy.

Billy...

"Billy."

Slowly he traces the word he had scratched into the dirty wall. The marks are sloppy, dark - not from age but from all the dirt that fills the air, fills the room, fills his lungs. The word should mean something to him but it doesn't. Not really. Not anymore.

"Billy," he says again, voice rough and husky from disuse. 

"That's my name."

But what did it matter? He didn't even know how long he has been here, how long since his car crashed into a wall and flung him into some gross monsters arms, into another dimension. He had tried to count the days, to mark them on the wall. But no sun was rising at this rotten place, no moon was ever up in the sky. There was only an ill, glowing light and darkness, red lightning in the distance. For all that he knows, time had frozen over.

After the first ten markings on the old metal wall in a small upstairs office in the warehouse - ten lines that meant nothing, that he had made whenever the urge to eat had been too overwhelming to ignore, threatening him with passing out - Billy had decided to move. The rusty cans of food he had found in one of the cupboards - old and dented and halfway to rotting - had been running out anyway. Better move now when he had some food left to take with him as when he was on his last ration.

Wandering outside and back into what looked like Hawkins but also not, always feeling haunted by shadows, always feeling like someone or something was watching him, had been a bizarre experience. Everything looked kinda the same but different, old, broken, rotting. The buildings he had become used to over the last eight months were all there but cold and uninviting.

Empty.

While entering every house on his way, either for food or for shelter - to hide from the animals he could hear running around, sniffing the air, always yowling and in groups way to big to fight - he hasn't found a single soul. Billy wasn't sure where he was, if it was his own personal circle of hell or some long and livid dream he was having in the last seconds of his life, after having crashed his car harder then he remembered.

Whatever it was, it was going on for forever. And he was completely alone.

He had wandered around, an old backpack with only one strap, he had found somewhere, swung over his shoulder. Filled with canned food. Light on bad days, reassuringly heavy on days he had been on a good raid.

Billy had stayed in the High School for a while, but the empty halls and big rooms had felt to haunted. He found something that looked like a hole in the wall and tried to punch through the thick, flesh-like material that covered it, but had to give up when some of the hellhounds sniffed him out.

The Harringtons House had been next. There had been memories here. Good ones. Of gentle touches and smiling eyes. Eyes he had put his fist against once and which still had forgiven him. He had wanted to stay here, hunting Steve’s ghost to get a sense of closeness and warmth. But then he had found the dead body in the pool. Half rotten, partly eaten. Billy had only heard about the girl that vanished in passing, had seen her photo put up in the School hallway beside the detention room, but he recognized the red mob of hair, dirty and bloody as it was. It was not Steve’s ghost that left the empty and cold house with him, but Barbara Holland’s.

He had tried to stay at the local pool, but something had just felt wrong, like being an echo of himself. More than once he had found himself in places on the vicinity he did not remember going to. On the stand, feeling sick and shivering. In the showers, hunched over nothing while thick slime dripped from the showerhead. In the sauna, curled into a ball and helplessly crying. Billy had run after that.

He had run as far as he could, getting sloppy, getting careless, nearly getting ripped apart by something bigger than the dogs, something nearly human. He had ended up in his own home, his own room, as broken and wrong as anything else.

The place didn't feel safe, but at least it felt familiar, so Billy had stayed. Had build himself a nest where his bed used to be, salvaged blankets from around the neighborhood, sometimes ventured out for longer to find food. Had set up traps. Whenever he felt the need to sleep, he had etched another day into the wooden wall beside his head. A reminder of how far he had made it. A reminder of why it mattered that he woke up tomorrow.

"Billy..."

Sometimes he could hear Max's voice, could hear her sobbing. Of course, it was just a hallucination, but he had been in the house for over fifty days now, and still hadn't forgotten how her voice sounded. Even while he did tend to forget his own name now.

"That's my name..." Billy tells the darkness around himself. He is sitting in the furthest corner to the door, still numb and freezing under all the covers. He feels ill, knows that he lost a lot of weight, that he is pale like a ghost. The rusty screw that he uses to mark the wall looks sturdy in comparison to his shaking, boney finger.

He sets the sharp end to the wood and begins to write his name, line by line by line, above all the days and weeks he counted, little parts of wood falling to the ground. Unnoticed tears falling to the ground.

He will die here.

~~*~~

"Billy?"

"Billy??"

Shooting upright with a gasp, Billy nearly knocks into the wall, strains to hear. Cold sweet covers his body and he feels nauseous from his own stench. It’s silent around him and he is nearly convinced that the voice had just been in his dream. His dreams were only filled with desperation these days. Who had nightmares when living in a Nightmare.

"Billy?"

Again. An unfamiliar voice calling out. It sounds like a girl, still a child.

"Billy, Where are you?"

The voice echoes from far away sounds distorted and still like it is directly beside him.

"I'm here."

Billy’s words are barely a whisper. After so long he is afraid who might hear, afraid who might be calling. No soul lives in this dead place. He had checked and checked again.

“Billy?”

He can hear noises from outside the house. More real than the girl's voice, more in the here with him. Rustling and running, the scratching of claws against wood. They have found him. Maybe the voice had lead them here, maybe it had only been a matter of time till the hellhounds would find him. But the heavy panting outside his planked shut window and the rattling of the old door are unmistakable.

“Billy.”

Coming out of his trance, Billy jumps to his feet. He is unsteady and feels weak, but grabs the rusty axe he found a while ago, can barely hold it up.

“I’m here!”

If he is calling out to the monsters or to the girl, Billy isn’t sure, doesn’t care. The door bursts in front of him, wood exploding inwards with the force of one of the dogs throw itself against it. he has never seen them up close, and he is thankful for it now, while one opens their head like a flower, reveals needle-sharp teeth and screams.

“Come on! Come and get me!”

Billy won’t go out without a fight, refuses to, after struggling to survive for so long. Maybe it will be quick. Quicker then starving. He brings the axe up - adrenaline making everything slow down - and brings it down onto the monster-dogs head. Hard. It screeches, springs away, limping, nearly collapsing into itself. Billy can see it spasm, knows he hit something important. Using this knowledge, he follows the dog, hits it again and kills it before the next one can spill into the room. Over the mangled, dead body steps another one, he can see more of them crowding into the living room.

The window at his left bursts. Glass rains onto Billy's arms, barely covered by his old leather jacket that is hanging off of him in rags. Seeing how another of the monsters climbs through the window, all Billy can do is retreat, pressing back against the wall.

For one moment Billy is flooded by memories of how this room used to look. All the make-pretend posters of chicks, all sparse furniture. Not a home but a cage. He regrets that he never got out of there in the real world, never got to find out what person he could be at the side of that one boy that mattered most. How fitting that Billy will be dying here together with his regrets.

One of the dogs pounces.

Billy brings the axe up one last time.

Hands grab at him from behind, strong arms winding around his hips. Billy screams. One of the monsters must have ripped through the wooden wall. He is dragged backward. For a moment he can’t breathe, stuck in - in something. Gray and cold and gooey. Something that tries to hold onto him.

Then Billy is ripped free. He stumbles back and falls, unable to find any balance, landing on his back in the middle of his room. Sun hits his face.

A lot of screaming is sounding around and above him but Billy can't make any sense of any of it. Max comes into view, tears and snoot running over her face. Beside her a strange girl that frees herself from a blindfold then wipes the blood cascading out her nose away carelessly. Other kids screeching and screaming, faces distantly familiar.

There is a hole in the wall. The same wall Billy had just been cornered against. Same but different. The wood is trying to knit itself back together, obscuring the view of the gray and ill world that lies behind. One of the Dogs tries to squeeze through, but a nailed bat comes down on its head, reducing it to goo and pain.

Billy can just stare at Steve's back, while the boy massacres the monster like he has done this his whole life. Then the hole is gone. Like it never existed.

Silence falls over the room.

"Billy?"

Steve sinks on his knees beside him like going down for prayer. His eyes are so huge, swimming in tears, his lips moving but not forming words.

"I'm here," Billy says slowly just to see a smile form on this lips.

"Yeah. Yeah. You are. We thought... I had no idea. We saw you die. I would have looked for you if I had known. My god..."

"Saw me die?"

Between all the things that don't make any sense, this sticks out to Billy the most. No one had been there when he crashed his car when the monster made of shadows had dragged him away. How could they have seen?

"At Star Court," Max explains. Her voice is still thick from crying but she tries to appear tough. Billy wants to hug her. "You stopped the monster. And it stabbed you through the chest. That was over three months ago."

Billy remembers one particular day at the beginning, where a sudden harsh pain had knocked him out cold like someone had ripped his chest apart. His body had been aching for days after.

"Wasn't me," he mumbles

Steve and Max help him to sit up. His eyes burn from the sun and his head hurts from all the noise and motion around him. But the sweet taste of fresh air flooding his lungs makes up for it. Might just make up for anything. One of the kids - the one with the most unfortunate bowl cut - steps forward with a glass of water, offering it. Billy has to press his eyes shut to keep actual tears from spilling over.

"How--- how did you find me?"

"You wrote."

With a quick gesture, Max points back toward his bed, where the fresh carving of his name is visible on the wall, a few inches above the mattress. Maybe if he would look behind the bed frame, he would find all the lines he had drawn while always thinking it would be the last one. But that's some curiosity for another time. Max did not deserve the burden of knowing that he had been so close for so long.

Instead, Billy lets his eyes travel to the brown haired boy still kneeling beside him and gives into the urge to lean into his warm arms. If Steve is disgusted by his smell and all the dirt, he does a good act of not showing it, holds onto him like a drowning man.

"Thought I'd never see you again, pretty boy."

Steve nods, seems not to trust himself to speak but his expressive brown eyes tell enough. He leans their foreheads together.

"Billy." Steve's voice is only a whisper.

"I'm here."

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for stopping here. Of course, they will get Billy back on his feet and all of them will live happy and peaceful! (Until season 4 at least)
> 
> Leave some love and come say ["hey on Tumblr!"](https://klayr-de-gall.tumblr.com/)


End file.
